Underdog Fantasy Tournament Strategy
One of my favorite Best Ball tournaments is held at Underdog Fantasy, and it is quite different due to the payout format. Typically, Best Ball is very straightforward, not only in terms of format but also in terms of prize payouts. Most tournaments or contests have a big pot at the end of the year awarded to the teams with the most season long points. But Underdog Fantasy’s “Weekly Winners” is exactly what it sounds like, rather than one huge payout at the end of the year, there are relatively large payouts every week.
Contest Details
- Entry Fee: $10
- Format: Best Ball ( What is Best Ball? )
- Draft Size: 12 | Roster Size: 20
- Roster: 1QB, 2RB, 3WR, 1Flex, 1, TE, 10 Bench
Weekly Prize Breakdown
$1,700,00 in total Prizes, $100k paid out weeks 1-17 as follows:
- 1st $20,000
- 2nd $10,000
- 3rd $5,500
- 4th $4,000
- 5th $3,500
- 6th $3,000
- 7th $2,500
- 8th $2,000
- 9th $1,500
- 10th $1,250
- 11 – 15th $1,000
- 16 – 20th $750
- 21 – 25th $500
- 26 – 30th $250
- 31 – 40th $125
- 41 – 50th $50
- 51 – 100th $30
- 101 – 200th $20
- 201 – 500th $15
- 501 – 4000th $7
What’s The Big Difference?
In regular Best Ball drafts, you have to prepare for a long season. You have to have depth and make sure bye weeks align perfectly so no position gets zero points the week someone is off. You have to hope that one of your late-round picks becomes a league winner to offset the chances of finding uniqueness to gain an edge over the hundreds of thousands of other teams. But in Weekly Winners, those factors all go out the window.
With the payout every week, you don’t have to plan for depth or bye weeks for a long season; you just have to build a roster that can get as many points as possible for one week. In other words, you don’t want balance; you want to stack everything as much as possible.
Instead of planning for guys off on bye weeks, you want to stack your bye weeks as much as possible to give you the most active players for any given NFL week. You also want to stack your QB with at least two targets.
The Weekly Winners Best Ball contest is like playing DraftKings Sunday 10-game slate. You are trying to win the day, but the best part is you don’t have to deal with a heavy ownership percentage as there can only be one person in your league that has CMC or CD Lamb, etc.
If 40% of people own CMC in DraftKings on Sunday, and he has a big day, you don’t gain the same edge as if you had him with just 8.3% rostership.
Ok, here comes the math…
There are 186,840 entrants in the Weekly Winners contest. Every draft has 12 people, meaning that only 15,570 people can have CMC on their roster. That’s 8.3% roster ownership. So, the uniqueness increases with every pick in the draft. If you draft CMC and then take Chris Olave and Mike Evans with picks 24 and 25, you have to assume your first three picks are quite rare. If only 8.3% of people drafted CMC, then what percentage of those same people also took Olave and Evans?
The best part, is that most of the people in this contest haven’t figured this out, and are still drafting for a season-long contest.
My Strategy For Weekly Winners
- MAX Stack – If you draft Tyreek Hill in the first round, you should be targeting Waddle too, and then later get Tua. The Dolphns have a bye week 6, so make sure you either find good RB’s that match the same bye week or have the same bye week to increase days when all your best players are playing. The main concept to this strategy is you want good players on the week the Dolphins (or who ever to decide) goes off on Sunday.
- One QB, Two at the Most – This is a $10 entry, if your QB gets hurt, oh well, you’re not going to win. But wasting roster spots on a QB when you could have 10 wide receivers increases your odds of success. Rememeber, you’re trying to win one week, so get a QB and plan for the day he has his best game of the year.
- Draft Players with Fallen ADP – You want to build your roster with the most unique but high ceiling talent as possible. So get aggressive.
Want to try it out, Sign Up at Underdog Fantasy Today.
